


Burning

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-08-23 16:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16622789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Merlin's magic cost him and Arthur everything.





	Burning

 

“Are you possessed? Are you a demon? Devil worshipper?”

Arthur’s eyes burn with the accusation; Merlin can feel the pyre in that look, and his skin pricks in response.

He tries to rise from his knees, but the weight of the chains and the sword pressed to his neck keep him bowed.

“Please, Sire!” His face still throbs from the last time he called Arthur by his name. “I cannot help the strangeness I was born with.

Arthur sneers, and it’s not the look of a spoiled boy. It is a look of rage and of hate that Merlin has never witness on the golden king before. He strides down the stairs and leans over just enough to grab Merlin’s chin in his rough hands. “So you admit you’re an unnatural creature. Was it your mother who made the deal? Or was the absent father one of the fallen sent to ruin a women and sire a bastard? Should we cleanse her too?”

The first bite of something other than fear latches onto Merlin; he makes to throw himself at Arthur, though he knows he cannot, that it will not save her. Percival yanks hard, wrenching Merlin’s shoulder so that he cries out. The magic, locked into the runes on the metal shackles, flares. It’s a pathetic, desperate attempt. “Please, do not harm her! She has no power of her own.”

Arthur shakes his head. “But she bore you, a creature that claims to have been tainted since birth.”

The word “creature” cuts Merlin harder than his bound wrist somehow. “I have never harmed you, Sire. Nor your men.”

One of the knights snorts and something in Arthur cracks audibly, echoing off stones. “Perhaps not.”

It is said so softly that hope, icy and sharp, splashes through Merlin. Arthur turns away though, a hand raises. “Return him to his cage. Light the fire before the sun rises. No one needs to watch this.”

Merlin knows that Arthur means this as a kindness, a last offering to remember a man who was once his friend, his lover. He takes no comfort in it.

He doesn’t fight when the knights drag him from the room, or concern himself with the flaying flesh of his knees. There is no more fight in him, no more tears, no will left in him.

Tomorrow, the man he loves will burn him in secrecy and there is nothing he can do. Nothing he wants to do. For a moment, his magic bleeds into his eyes, desperate to save him.

It is the first time he has ever felt like a monster. Perhaps the last as well.

-

Gwaine is on guard duty after Merlin is forced inside a small cage. Percival and Gwaine both struggle to bind him the way Arthur has requested. He watches, absent from himself, as they loop the collar around his neck and tie his arms above his head.

Somewhere, in the back of himself, he knows they have tied his bindings too loose. He recognizes the kindness in the gesture, the way it begs him to free himself. He tries to thank them for the small mercy, for their friendship, for the love that pours crisp water down his throat and wraps a blanket around his shoulders. It comes out a garbled, sloppy-wet sob, so he sinks as far down as the coarse rope will let him, and he shifts in and out of a fevered nightmare.

When he wakes, shivering and sore, it is to a scuffle beyond the walls of his confinement. The knights who yank him from the cage are unfamiliar to him; they are ungentle in the way they scrape his body along first stone, then dirt pathways. The pyre is larger than anything he has ever seen, and the only people to witness it are the knights he does not know and Arthur.

A festering part of him snarls but Arthur refuses to see him.

When he is bound this time, the ropes cut into his skin and he cannot feel parts of himself. He cannot decide if he is hurt his friends have not come, or thankful they are not here to see this.

“You have an opportunity, Merlin.” Arthur watches him, but Merlin does not know the man behind dull, blue eyes. Arthur waves a hand, and the metal stalling his magic is removed. “Prove to me your magic is harmless. Show me why I should stop this.”

Merlin stares at him. His body is vibrating with pent up energy and he knows that when it explodes out of him, Arthur will have his justice. He does the only thing he knows to do; bites down hard enough to crack his teeth in his skull and forces the magic down into his core, where it sits hotter than the fire they are about to light.

Arthur waits, patiently, but Merlin makes no move and so he nods towards the knights. Merlin closes his eyes and lets go of everything in him as the first flames lick at him, even as he feels a familiar hand struggle to reach his own, and a body he knows too well curling around him.

 


End file.
